CHAPTER IV
THE KINDLY KILLERS
"Sometimes you just don't know." Celeste's voice was strangely flat and lifeless in the black. "Sometimes there's nothing you can do but hope and try."
I didn't answer.
Celeste again: "What would you have had me do, Mark? Let them kill you? That was their first thought, you know; you really did upset them with those things you said about me on the voco. They were afraid you knew so much more than you do."
"Forget it," I muttered. "There's no point to going back over it now."
"But there is! For me, there is!" For the first time, in this place, my companion's voice showed a flash of animation. "You were the only one who'd pushed them even a little bit off balance. I wanted to know you—to find out what you had that the rest of mankind lacked. If I could do that and save you too, what was the harm in it?"
"The harm?" In spite of myself, I roused and glowered through the blackness. "What was the harm, when you urged me to tell you—things—not knowing Kel were there?"
"But Mark, I wouldn't have done it if it had mattered! The things you said—those were for me, not them. I knew they couldn't understand them. They haven't any insight into human feelings, human thoughts."
"After the thrill-mills, you'd try to make me believe that?" I choked. "They know more about the human mind than man himself!"